Palm Springs Life Magazine’s Jim Powers writes that Pioneertown will be hosting the Pioneertown International Film Festival, billed as a celebration of western and indie cinema in an iconic town, August 27th – 29th. The event promises to bring the past into the present with a bang and a whinny.
Historic Pioneertown was founded in 1946, when Dick Curtis and 17 investors, including Roy Rogers, Dale Evans and The Sons of The Pioneers western music group purchased 32,000 acres of land and began building a filming location, vacation destination and permanent residence for people working in the entertainment industry, ranchers and desert lovers that would eventually become Pioneertown. Mane Street was built as a recreation of an 1880’s western town, with fully functional buildings rather than just facades, to be used as a backdrop for western movies. Back in the 1940’s and 1950’s, Pioneertown was an entirely self-contained town with cast, crew and others as residents. Hundreds of Westerns were filmed there, including “The Cisco Kid”, “Annie Oakley” and “Judge Roy Bean”. Gene Autry, the famous Singing Cowboy, filmed his Flying A television shows from Pioneertown, with the Pioneertown Bowling Alley being a favorite location. Later as Westerns fell out of fashion and the town lost many residents, one of the old buildings became a roadhouse bar called Pappy and Harriet’s. As the years rolled along and Pappy passed away it was taken over by Linda Krantz and Robyn Celia, and grew into one of the biggest little music venues in the entire country, with A-listers like Paul McCartney, Robert Plant, Lucinda Williams, Wanda Jackson, Lorde, Leon Russell, and Daniel Lanois to name a few gracing its stage. Billboard Magazine has called it one of the Top Ten live music venues in the entire country.
Spurred by a love of both Pioneertown and western films, film director and producer Julian Pinder saw an opportunity to create a small-scale international film festival. Ten years ago, Pinder, a film director and producer who created and directed the Netflix original series, Fire Chasers, with Leonardo DiCaprio in 2017, purchased a 50-acre ranch just outside Pioneertown. For the inaugural event, Pinder has brought in former Sundance programmer Todd Luoto to curate a collection of new and classic western films. The opener is “The Last Manhunt”, produced by Jason Momoa of Aquaman fame and directed by Christian Camargo, The event will feature live music, roughly 50 legendary directors, actors, filmmakers and special guests, film maker dinners under the stars, masterclasses, showings of some recently restored Paramount westerns, a showcase of “The Indigenous Image in Westerns”, among other events.
Tickets are on sale until August 4th or until sold out. For more information about the event and tickets, please visit the festival’s official website at; https://www.pioneertownfilmfest.com/
To read Jim Powers’ original article, courtesy of Palm Springs Life Magazine, please visit: https://www.palmspringslife.com/pioneertown-film-festival/
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